Andy Warhol didn't just like parties. He lived for them. But what happens when the music stops and the lights come up? Most people think of Warhol and they see a soup can or Marilyn Monroe’s perfectly curated face. They see the neon, the glamour, the polished pop surface. Andy Warhol After the Party is something else entirely. It’s a 1979 screenprint that feels like the morning after a bender at Studio 54. It’s cluttered. It’s a bit frantic. Honestly, it’s one of the most honest things he ever made.
Warhol was obsessed with "stuff." If you look at the composition of After the Party, you aren't looking at a celebrity. You’re looking at the debris of a high-society dinner. Scraps. Half-empty glasses. It’s a still life, sure, but it’s a still life that’s vibrating. He used these thick, almost aggressive "drawing" lines over the top of the photograph—something he called "finger painting" with the screenprinting process. It looks like he grabbed a crayon and just went to town on the image.
The Story Behind the Mess
In the late 70s, Warhol was basically a walking brand. He was hanging out with Halston, Liza Minnelli, and Bianca Jagger. But he was also getting older. The 1968 shooting by Valerie Solanas had changed him; he was more guarded, more aware of the "after." When he created After the Party, he was working with Rupert Jasen Smith, his master printer. They weren't just making a picture of a table. They were capturing the specific emptiness that follows a crowd.
The image features a bunch of glasses. Some are tall, some are short. There’s a sense of leftovers. You can almost smell the stale cigarette smoke and the spilled gin. What’s wild is how he chose to color it. Instead of the flat, even tones of his earlier work, he used these overlapping, off-register swaths of color. Sometimes the red doesn't line up with the glass. Sometimes the blue just floats in the background like a ghost. It mimics that blurry, double-vision feeling you get when you've had one too many martinis and the room starts to tilt just a little bit.
Why Collectors Are Still Obsessed
If you try to buy an original print of After the Party today, you're going to need a heavy checkbook. Why? Because it represents the "Late Warhol" era that critics used to hate but now absolutely adore. For a long time, the art world thought Warhol had sold out by the late 70s. They thought he was just a society portraitist. But After the Party proves he was still watching. He was still the voyeur.
The print was part of a series for Grosset & Dunlap. It wasn't meant to be some grand political statement. It was just a scene. But in that scene, he captured the hollowness of the disco era. It’s dark. Even with the bright colors, there’s a loneliness to it. No people are in the shot. Just the evidence that people were there. It’s the ultimate "social" piece that contains zero social interaction.
The Technical Weirdness of the 1979 Series
Warhol was experimenting. By 1979, he was using a lot of "diamond dust"—crushed glass—on some prints, though not usually this specific one. But the After the Party prints used a multi-layered screen process that was incredibly complex.
- He’d start with a photograph.
- He’d blow it up until it got grainy.
- He’d trace the outlines, but not perfectly.
- He’d layer colors that felt "wrong" for the objects—acid yellows, deep purples.
This wasn't about realism. It was about the vibe. If you look at the lines in After the Party, they look like they were drawn by a nervous hand. They aren't the clean, commercial lines of the 1962 Campbell’s Soup Cans. These lines are jagged. They’re human. It’s Warhol letting the mask slip just a tiny bit to show that he saw the messiness of the world he inhabited.
It’s Not Just a Print, It’s a Time Capsule
Think about 1979. New York was broke. The city was dangerous. But inside the clubs, it was all glitter and excess. Andy Warhol After the Party is the bridge between those two worlds. It shows the excess, but it shows it as trash. It’s literally a picture of dishes that need to be washed.
There’s a specific version of this print—part of a portfolio—that features a dark, almost black background. It makes the glasses look like they’re floating in space. It’s spooky. Honestly, it’s one of the closest things Warhol ever got to a memento mori—a reminder that we all die. The party ends. The guests leave. The glasses stay on the table, empty.
How to Tell if You’re Looking at a Real One
Authenticating Warhol is a nightmare. Seriously. Because he used a factory system, there are a lot of "Warhol-ish" things out there. For After the Party, you have to look at the signature. He usually signed these in the lower right, often in felt-tip pen or pencil. But more importantly, you have to look at the edges of the ink.
In the late 70s, the screenprinting at his studio was high-quality but intentionally "imperfect." You should see the texture of the ink sitting on top of the paper, not soaked into it like a modern digital print. If it looks too perfect, it’s probably a fake. The real ones have a grit to them. They feel like they were made by a person who was in a hurry to get to the next club.
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The Legacy of the "Morning After" Aesthetic
You see the influence of this piece everywhere now. Modern photography on Instagram—the "blurred flash" look, the photos of messy tables after a dinner party—that all traces back to what Andy was doing here. He made the mundane look expensive. He made the leftovers look like art.
Most people want the Marilyn. They want the flashy stuff. But the real heads? They want the Andy Warhol After the Party stuff. They want the work that shows he was actually paying attention to the silence. It’s a weirdly quiet piece for a man who was famous for being surrounded by noise.
Warhol once said, "I always take an empty suitcase when I travel." He liked the idea of empty spaces. This print is the ultimate empty space. It’s the visual representation of the "hangover" that was about to hit the 1980s. It’s brilliant, it’s messy, and it’s arguably more relevant now—in our world of curated "authentic" messes—than it was when the ink was wet.
Actionable Insights for Art Enthusiasts and Collectors
- Verify the Edition: After the Party was typically produced in an edition of 1000, plus various artist proofs. If you're looking at a "one-of-a-kind" version, be extremely skeptical unless it has rock-solid provenance from the Andy Warhol Foundation.
- Check the Paper: Warhol used heavy Arches 88 paper for many of his late-70s prints. This paper has a specific weight and "tooth" that is hard to replicate.
- Look for the Line Work: Pay close attention to the hand-drawn-style lines. In genuine prints, these lines have a slight "bleed" or variation in thickness that suggests a physical screenprint process rather than a flat reproduction.
- Contextualize the Value: Understand that "Late Warhol" (1970–1987) is currently seeing a massive surge in market value. Pieces like this, which were once overlooked, are now considered essential to understanding his transition into Neo-Expressionism.
- Storage Matters: Because of the specific inks used in 1979, these prints are highly susceptible to UV fading. If you own or view one, ensure it is behind museum-grade UV-glass, as the neon pinks and yellows are the first to disappear under sunlight.